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Maggie's Medicaid: Stop pushing more Obamacare

EDITORIAL

State Senate President Chuck Morse of Salem is to be commended for his attempt last week to rise above politics and provide better health care for more Granite Staters near the poverty line. That was clearly not the goal of Gov. Maggie Hassan and her Democrats, who were all about tying New Hampshire even tighter to the sinking ship that is Obamacare.

The Democrats have made it clear, locally and nationally, that they are uninterested in costs and efficiency and more interested in expanding their voting base as the Party of the Handouts.

That Gov. Hassan and Speaker Terie Norelli would keep pushing for Medicaid expansion even after the disastrous rollout of Obamacare this month is breathtaking.

That they were willing to set up New Hampshire for a broadbased tax (which would follow the inevitable under-funding of yet another federal program) was perhaps the least-noted but most onerous element of the Hassan-backed legislation.

Senators Morse, Jeb Bradley, and other Republicans tried to guard against that over-spending threat by proposing a move to private insurance and a circuit-breaker that would end the program if the feds broke their bargain.

Republicans would be wise to bring the broadbased tax issue front and center when the Democrats push for this spending expansion again in the new year. But perhaps Gov. Hassan, along with U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, will have wised up by then and realized that the toxic debacle that is Obamacare could threaten the reelection campaigns they had thought so secure.